THE EQUINOX OF THE GODS
CHAPTER 3
Beginnings of Mysticism.
The Birth of
FRATER OU MH.
7=4
Oscar Eckenstein, on his arrival in Mexico, where he was to climb
mountains with the subject of our essay, found him in a rather
despondent mood. He had attained the most satisfactory results.
He was able to communicate with thed divine forces, and
operations such as those of invisibility and evocation had been
mastered. Yet with all this there was a certain dissatisfaction.
Success had not given him all that he had hoped for. He placed
the situration before his companion, rather to clear his own mind
than hoping for any help, for he supposed him to be entirely
ignorant of all these subjects, which he habitually treated with
dislike and contempt. Judge of his surprise, then, when he found
in this unpromising quarter a messenger form the Great White
Brotherhood ! His companion told him to abandon all magick.
"The Task," said Eckenstein, "involves the control of the mind.
Yours is a wandering mind." The proposition was indignantly
denied.
"Test it," said the Master. A short experiment was conclusive.
It was impossible for the boy to keep his mind fixed upon a
single object for even a few seconds at a time. The mind,
thougfh perfectly stable in motion, was unable to rest, just as a
gyroscope falls when the flywheel slows down. An entirely new
course of experiments was consequently undertaken. Half-an-hour
every morning and half-an-hour every evening were devoted to
attempts to control the mind, by the simple process of imagining
a familiar object, and endeavouring to keep concentrated upon
it. (See Part I of Book 4 for a description of this, and an
explanation of the difficulty of the task, even in the case of one
whose powers of concentrated attention, in the ordinary sense of
the phrase, are highly developed.)
He soon became sufficiently expert in this initial practice to
proceed to concentration on regularly moving objects such as a
pendulum, and, ultimately, on living objects. A further series
of experiments dealt with the other senses. He tried to imagine
and retain the taste of chocolate or of quinine, the smell of
various familiar perfumes, the sound of bells, waterfalls, and so
on, or the feeling excited by such objects as velvet, silk, fur,
sand and steel.
In the spring of 1901, he left Mexico, went to San Francisco,
Honolulu, Japan, China and Ceylon, always continuing these
experiments. His Master had not told him to what they would
ultimately lead. In Ceylon he found Frater I.A. (Allan Bennett),
with whom he went to Kandy, where they took a bungalow named
Marlboroigh, overlooking the lake.
I.A. had himself been developing on similar lines under P.
Ramanathan, the Solicitor-General of Ceylon, known to occultists
under the name of Shri Parananda. (He is the author of commentaries on the Gospels of Matthew
and John, which he explains as containing many of the aphorisms
of Yoga.) I.A. told him that in order
to concentrate he must first see that no interruptions reached
him from the body, and counselled the adoption of Asana, a
settled position in which all bodily movement was to be
suppressed. Further, he was to practice Pranayama, or control of
the breathing, which has a similar effect in reducing to the
lowest possible point the internal movements of the body. (See Part I of Book 4 for full descriptions, and Equinox for
some of FRATER PERDURABO'S records of these practices.)
During the months of this stay at Kandy, he practised these,
obtained success in Asana, the intense pain of the practices
being overcome, and changed into an indescribable sense of
physical well-being and comfort.
While in Pranayama he passed through the first stage, which is
marked by profuse perspiration of a peculiar kind; the second,
which is accompanied by rigidity of the body ; and the third, in
which the body unconsciously hops about the floor, without in any
way disturbing the Asana.
During the latter part of August and the whole of September, his
practices became continous by day and night, in order to create a
rhythm in the mind similar to that which Pranayama produces in
the body. He adopted a Mantra, or sacred sentence, by the
constant repetition of which it became automatic in his brain, so
that it would continue through sleep, and he would wake up
actually repeating the words. Sleep itself, too, was broken up
into short periods of very light sleep of a peculiar kind, in
which consciousness is hardly lost, althougfh the body obtains
perdect rest. These practices continued into October, at the
beginning of which he reached the state of Dhyana, a tremendous
spiritual experience, in which the subject and object of
meditation unite with excessive violence in blinding brilliance
and music of a kind to which earthly harmony affords no
parallel. (See Part I of Book 4, and Equinox Vol. I, No. IV.)
The result of this however was to cause so intense a satisfaction
with his progress, that he gave up work. He then visited
Anuradhapura and others of the buried cities of Ceylon. In
November he went to India, and in January visited I.A. at Akyab
in Burma,where that Adept was living in a monastery, with the
intention of preparing himself to take the Yellow Robe of the
Buddhist Sangha. The whole of the summer of I902 was spent in an
expedition to Chogo Ri (K2) in the Himalayas. (An account of this journey is given by Dr. Jacot-Guillarmod:
"Six mois dans l'Himalaya." His own story is in "The Spirit of
Solitude" (The Confessions of Aleister Crowley) Vol. II.) During the
whole of this period he did very little occult work.
November, 1902, him in Paris, where he stayed off and on till the
spring of 1903, when he returned to his house in Scotland.
We must now go backwards in time, to take up a thread which had
run through his whole work, so umportant as to demand a chapter
to itself:--